Abbas condemns US senators for supporting anti-terror legislation

Abbas condemned US senators for voting in favor of the Taylor Force Act, which calls to cut all funding to the PA if it continues paying salaries to terrorists.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas condemned US Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee for voting in favor of the Taylor Force Act anti-terror legislation.

At a meeting of the PLO Executive Committee on Sunday, the PLO condemned the senators for their vote, which calls to cut all funding to the PA if it continues paying salaries to terrorists and allowances to families of so-called Martyrs.

The act is named in memory of Taylor Force — a former US Army officer and veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars who was murdered in Tel Aviv in a Palestinian stabbing attack in March 2016. The 28-year-old Force, a Vanderbilt University graduate student, had been visiting Israel as part of a school-organized spring break trip.

The PLO termed the bill as “an unacceptable act that will negatively affect everything that is connected to the Palestinians’ rights, and particularly their right to life and protection from the occupation army’s (IDF) violations, and [from] the summary executions that it carries out in the streets and military checkpoints,” Palestinian Media Watch reported.

The PA alleges the terrorists killed during these attacks are “summarily executed.”

The PA’s rewarding of terror has been a source of contention between the PA and the West for years.

Congress recently decided to act decisively after becoming aware that the family of the murderer of American veteran and university student Taylor Force, who was murdered last year in Tel Aviv, would be receiving a lifetime monthly stipend.

The PA rewards the terrorists and families of those who are either imprisoned or killed. Accordingly, Abbas recently defied the international community by continuing to spend $355 million a year on these payments.

During the meeting on Sunday, the PLO vowed to “continue its national, moral, and humanitarian responsibility towards the occupation’s victims, the victims of the organized state terror, and the victims of the herds of settlers and their terror organizations.”

Earlier this month, US lawmakers denounced the PA’s “sick” policy of paying salaries to terrorists and their families after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed the Taylor Force Act — which conditions $300 million of annual aid from the US on the PA ending the policy. The committee approved the act by a 17-4 vote.